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Sunday, March 8, 2015

Rise Up

John 2:13-22 (113)13The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. he also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.This is the Word of the LORDThanks be to God

Psalm 12 (608)To the leader: according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David.1Help, O LORD, for there is no longer anyone who is godly; the faithful have disappeared from humankind.2They utter lies to each other; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.3May the LORD cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts,4those who say, “With our tongues we will prevail; our lips are our own - who is our master?”5”Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up,” says the LORD; “I will place them in the safety for which they long.”6The promises of the LORD are promises that are pure, silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.7You, O LORD, will protect us; you will guard us from this generation forever.8On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among humankind.This is the Word of the LORDThanks be to God.For the past three weeks, we've been looking at the Psalms of Lament. We've seen the writers of scripture struggle with grief in Psalm 77, with their own sin in Psalm 25, and this week Psalm 12 looks out at a frightening world that is full of injustice.

On a Sunday where we have some new faces, it is perhaps a bit risky to grab hold of a text like this one. This is not the friendliest passage of scripture. I don’t know about y’all, but at first glance it doesn’t make me feel very good. I’d be a far sight happier with a friendly passage that gives me a pat on the back and tells me how wonderful and special I am.

But ignoring the messed up stuff going on around us doesn’t make it go away. There’s a time to read joy, there’s a time to read comfort, and there’s a time to read lament. We read this Psalm because it helps us to approach the darkness of the world. We read the darkness of the world through the lens of this Psalm because it gives us a promise that the darkness is not all there is, even when we’re caught up in the pain of living in a broken world. “Help, O LORD, for there is no longer anyone who is godly; the faithful have disappeared from humankind.”

I told a story not too long ago, at a meeting of our regional governing body, Presbytery. I told them about how once upon a time, when I was studying to be a minister, I would look at my classmates and rank them according to how "real" I thought their call was. I’d never say it to them, but I’d think it awfully hard. “Really, you think God called you to ministry? Wouldn’t you know it, the more folks had in common with me, the higher I would rank them?

I looked around at the state of the church, and of these future, and often current, leaders of the church, and I arrogantly put myself in a place to judge their worthiness. “Really, you think God called you to ministry?”

Then one day a thought occurred to me as clearly as if the Holy Spirit had whispered it in my ear. "You know some of them would say the same thing about you, right?" I had spent so much time in judgement over the flaws of my fellow travelers, I had totally overlooked my own flaws. Truth be told, I'm pretty confident I judged others to avoid looking at my own flaws.

I was speaking with a double heart, with the flattering lips that the Psalmist describes in verse 2. I saw that the church was hurting, and I saw that the community at my seminary was strained, and instead of reaching out with compassion and healing, I sat in cynical and patronizing judgment over them. Preacher-type folks are just as stuck in the mess of the world, or at least this Preacher-type person is.

When verses three and four tell us “May the LORD cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts, those who say, ‘With our tongues we will prevail; our lips are our own - who is our master?’” I can’t claim that I don’t fall under that category, I think all of us have fallen victim to our baser instincts from time to time, and have lied to ourselves and others.

In our tradition, there's an idea called the "Total Depravity of Man," which basically says that we are unable to save ourselves. Left to our own devices, we will chose selfishness and brokenness every time. We make messes we cannot clean up, and push others down so that we can feel as though we're higher than they are. Left to our own devices, humans are pretty terrible to one another. "Help, O LORD, for there is no longer anyone who is godly," includes us, when we’re left to our own devices.

But we are not left to our own devices. God intervenes in our lives and does good things through us. ”Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up,” says the LORD; “I will place them in the safety for which they long.” The lament over the sin-sick souls who people the world is real, but in the midst of the wickedness and vileness that cross our lives from time to time, this psalm reaches past the mess in front of it and grasps for God. God is acting, even though humans have a remarkable ability to make messes, God's power to redeem and protect us is far and away stronger than our ability to mess it up.

God protects the poor and the needy, God redeems his fallen people, God receives our lament, but does not abandon us to it. In the face of injustice, God acts. “”Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up,” says the LORD; “I will place them in the safety for which they long.” The LORD will rise up, and give the poor and the needy the protection, the safety, the justice for which they long.

In our tradition, there’s a concept called “Unconditional Election,” which means that God doesn’t save us because we deserve it, but because God wants us. God’s intervention is not an obligation, it’s a gesture of love that will not let us go. “‘I will now rise up,’ says the LORD,” not because we have earned it, but because we need it. God blazes a path through the wickedness and vileness in the world and establishes justice for all people. “You, O LORD, will protect us; you will guard us from this generation forever.” We’re not immune to the wickedness and vileness of the world, but we belong to the God who rescues us from it. Just because you notice that everything's not alright doesn't mean you're not part of the problem. When the LORD rises up on behalf of the poor and needy, maybe some of us need to sit down and get out of God's way. That way we can follow God rather than get run over.

The route through which God is traveling, rising up on behalf of the poor and needy, doesn’t necessarily destroy the wicked, instead it destroys wickedness. That’s the power of the cross, towards which we are headed during this season of Lament. The cross doesn’t smite the wicked, it purifies them, it purifies us, according to the promises of the LORD. The writer of Psalm 12 looks out onto the world and laments that he sees “On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among humankind,” but he also sees that God is still out there, still headed toward the fulfillment of the promised justice.

God will rise up to protect the poor and needy, and to cleanse the wicked, and we are all of those. We are poor, we are needy, we are wicked, and we are claimed by God. Therefore let us rise up also, following in God’s path, though we may find reason to lament along the way to the cross, we will also find protection, and justice, and our redemption, on the other side of the cross.